| 3
September 2002
DNA tests and
the death penalty
LAST week a
Michigan court ordered the release of Eddie Joe Lloyd, who had been
convicted of rape and murder back in 1984 and sentenced to life
imprisonment, without possibility of parole. Lloyd was in prison for 17
years before DNA testing showed he could not have committed the crimes
for which he had been convicted.
Lloyd was convicted based on evidence presented by the police: semen
stains on a piece of paper taped to a bottle, and on a pair of long
johns. DNA testing was not available at that time so the stains were
never tested. It was just presumed they came from Lloyd.
Today, the availability of DNA testing is rapidly changing forensic
investigations. Each individual's DNA is unique, which means tests can
be conducted on body fluids such as blood and semen, and from tissue
samples. Samples from a crime scene can be compared with those of
suspects, even using very old pieces of evidence, as in the case of
Lloyd.
The judge who passed the sentence on Lloyd had said he would have
preferred passing a sentence with "termination by extreme
constriction" (hanging) but Lloyd was lucky because Michigan did
not have capital punishment. Lloyd was lucky, too, that Michigan allowed
post-conviction requests for DNA testing.
Such requests are very new. In 1999, two states began to allow such
requests from convicts. Today, there are 26 states -- about half of the
total in the United States -- that provide for such tests but often with
severe restrictions.
The Innocence Project, a private initiative of lawyers and other civil
rights advocates in the United States, has fought to have these DNA
tests used more widely, and has helped people like Lloyd to get the
tests and appeal to the courts. Lloyd was the 110th prison inmate --
including several who had been sentenced to death -- to be saved by a
DNA test.
The Innocence Project does not stop with DNA testing. When a conviction
is found erroneous, they go on to investigate what went wrong. In the
case of Lloyd, it turns out he signed his "confession" while
confined in a mental hospital, and while on medication. Lloyd says the
police told him they were just going to use him, and his confession, as
a decoy to flush out the real killer. Lloyd, incidentally, is bipolar,
meaning someone who moves between extreme manic and depressed moods.
The Innocence Project found that mistaken identification was the most
common reason for a wrongful conviction, figuring in 61 of the 110
cases. That should come as no surprise: Psychologists know that a victim
of a crime is very prone to making false accusations, often tainted by
his or her own prior suspicions as well as biases and prejudices,
against a neighbor or relative against whom he or she has a grudge,
someone from a different ethnic or religious group, even a person whose
physical features "look" criminal.
The other reasons identified by the Innocence Project were: errors in
serological (blood) tests (40), police misconduct (38), prosecution's
misconduct (34), defective/fraud science (26), bad lawyering (23), false
witnesses (17), mistakes in microscopic hair comparisons (21), use of
informants/snitches (16) and false convictions (15).
We can see that human error -- mistaken identification, lapses in
laboratory tests -- figure prominently but there's also misconduct and
bad lawyering involved. Think now of our situation in the Philippines
and how we have to deal not just with human error but with the
incompetence and corruption of the police, crime technicians, lawyers
and judges.
Even worse, as we have seen lately, we now have to deal with police and
politicians trying to outdo each other with media events to project a
tough "law and order" image. Fall guys are all too easily
found -- the parallels between a manic-depressive Lloyd in Michigan and
Philip Medel Jr. in the Nida Blanca case are all too striking.
I'm afraid we're going to see many more miscarriages of justice,
including wrongful executions, if our police officials and the President
continue to parade people on nationwide television, passing judgment on
suspects without a trial. Even if DNA testing were to be used, I don't
think we can expect these honorable officials to admit later that they
erred.
The wrongful convictions in the United States have caused enough concern
to start a review of capital punishment in states where it is used. Last
year, Illinois Governor George Ryan was so disturbed by an increasing
number of wrongful death sentences, including the case of an inmate who
was cleared two weeks before his scheduled execution, that he ordered a
moratorium on executions.
Ryan also formed a committee to investigate capital punishment. The
committee released a report last April, noting that there were many
flaws in the criminal investigation and judicial systems that
contributed to wrongful convictions and recommended 85 measures to
reduce these errors. I will name a few and ask if we can implement these
measures in the Philippines: videotaping all interrogations of suspects
in all capital cases; establishing a statewide (or in the case of the
Philippines, a national) DNA database and an independent forensics lab;
a ban on the use of the death sentence for anyone convicted based solely
on the testimony of a single eyewitness, police informer or accomplice.
The experiences in the United States should give us more grounds to rid
ourselves of this barbaric practice, one which in the guise of
"justice" ends up executing or imprisoning the innocent while
the guilty roam free. It is encouraging that 110 members of our House of
Representatives have signed a resolution urging the President to suspend
all executions even as they introduce a bill to repeal the death
penalty.
Note that the Illinois investigation committee, even as they recommended
those 85 measures for a "fair and accurate" death penalty,
noted that "No system, given human nature and frailties, could ever
be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee
absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to
death."
|
